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Time to Deal with E-Waste

There’s no denying that America has become a throwaway society, where old acquisitions don’t need to show much wear and tear before being replaced. This is especially the case with electronic waste, the fastest growing piece of the nation’s municipal waste stream.

In New York, the problem is usually in plain sight, out there on the curb, along with the rest of the trash. Some items — discarded television sets, computers and printers that still have some life in them — are snapped up by other residents on the prowl for bargains. Some owners, not sure how to get rid of the stuff, store it. More likely, though, it ends up in the regular waste stream.

After years of study, the City Council seems ready to move this month on a bill that could set a new and important standard for recycling e-waste. The measure would oblige the manufacturers of certain electronic goods to recover or recycle a gradually increasing percentage of what they sell in the city — 25 percent in 2012, rising to 65 percent in 2018. How they collect their old equipment — consisting mainly of television sets, computers, printers and MP3 players — is up to them, although the Department of Sanitation will have to approve any plans.

The legislation smartly builds on efforts by several states, led by Maine, California, Washington and Maryland, to get a handle on the proliferation of technological trash. Most of the council has signed on, including the Speaker, Christine Quinn. Mayor Michael Bloomberg has never liked mandates coming from the council, but in this case he should go along. Having built an impressive environmental portfolio, and having supported other types of recycling — paper, metal and glass — he can hardly ignore the special problems presented by electronic waste.

The council’s timing could not be better. It’s Christmas, and consumers are hungry for the latest must-have devices. But as apartment dwellers eager to reclaim floor space replace their old sets with flat-screen wall TV’s, little thought is given to how the old model is discarded. Sometimes owners hold on to their old equipment, especially computers, for fear of losing personal data, but more often they give it to the super or dump it on the curb. And that means trouble for the environment. The Natural Resources Defense Council, which helped draft the bill, says that electronic waste accounts for about 70 percent of the heavy metals found in municipal landfills — including lead, mercury, arsenic and cadmium — that can leach into water supplies. Some of these gadgets even end up at the Newark incinerator, which handles city rubbish, sending a toxic brew into the region’s air.

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The environmental benefits of the bill are clear enough. But there is also an economic benefit. Disposing of thousands of tons of heavy e-waste every year costs city taxpayers dearly. If manufacturers are compelled to help with the burden, it won’t be long before they figure a way to streamline designs and include fewer toxic components. Mandating responsible recycling in a market as huge as New York could inspire a welcome wave of environmental conscience in corporate boardrooms.

As progressive as the council bill is, it cannot solve every problem associated with e-waste. A fair amount of recycling of discarded electronic material already takes place in this country, but much of its ends up being shipped abroad to developing nations, where unprotected workers are exposed to a machine’s toxic guts while they extract reusable parts. What cannot be salvaged is often dumped in or near water sources, a practice that environmental groups say has contributed to polluted soil and drinking water for poor populations.

Even on this score, the council’s approach offers hope. The manufacturers who must now take responsibility for this waste may ultimately find ways of disposing of it that do not burden poor countries. Several manufacturers, including HP and Dell and Apple, have designed programs to reclaim old equipment and prevent it from being dumped elsewhere, and there is every reason to expect other makers to join in.

A version of this editorial appears in print on , on Page 14CY12 of the National edition with the headline: Time to Deal with E-Waste. Today's Paper|Subscribe